In the suit, filed in Franklin County Common Pleas Court, the dealers say that the state agencies improperly approved Tesla’s dealer license this year because the company did not provide a copy of its contract with the manufacturer of the vehicles to be sold.

Even though the manufacturer and the retailer are the same company, dealers say that the law still calls for proper documentation.

And, as the dealers see it, Tesla would be unable to submit a valid contract because the law requires such an agreement to be between “two separate contracting parties,” Bruce said.

So they're basically trying to make it harder for the people of Ohio to buy electric cars, and to harm a US manufacturing startup creating good jobs, based on a legal technicality.

“This is the same kind of bullying from the dealers we’ve faced in other states,” said James Chen, Tesla’s vice president of regulatory affairs and associate general counsel. “The dealers, when they’re defeated in the court of public opinion, in the media and in the legislature, they then go to the courts. It’s incredibly hypocritical for dealers to claim simultaneously that the model is illegal and that lawmakers must act to make it illegal", he said.

Why does Tesla want to sell directly? Because regular car dealers don't know enough about EVs, because they make most of their money from service and maintenance while Tesla has decided to not make any money from that part of its operations (so incentives are very different), and because to really explain the benefits of electric cars often means explaining what they do better than gas cars, something that car dealers who also sell gas cars wouldn't want to do.